Parish Church of St Mor

Parish Church of St Mor

This is a mid-Victorian parish church designed in a loose Early English style, though incorporating Transitional and Decorated elements. The building is constructed of rough-dressed, uncoursed granite blocks on a chamfered plinth with sandstone dressings. It features a steeply-pitched slate roof with coped gables, stone ridges and an eastern gable cross.

The church plan consists of a continuous nave and chancel with a tall west tower and a lean-to vestry projection to the north, flush with the east end. The division between the three-bay nave and two-bay chancel is expressed by narrow stepped buttresses on the north and south sides, which break the eaves-line and terminate in sandstone gablets. Both the east and west ends also feature flush stepped buttresses.

The nave has three windows of plate tracery design, each containing paired lancets with a small quatrefoil oculus above, recessed within an overall pointed arch and having returned, moulded labels. The chancel windows consist of paired lancets with roll-moulded jambs and cusped heads, with moulded labels returned as stringcourses onto the sides and east end; simple foliate bosses mark the springing above each pair of windows. The large three-light east window is in Geometric Decorated style, featuring cusped lights and conjoined oculi in the tracery heads. The east end has a stringcourse which drops below the window to form a sill-course terminating at the right with a foliated stop.

The square west tower comprises three storeys on a battered and chamfered plinth, topped by a tall saddleback roof parapetted as the main building and carrying an iron gable cross to the west. The entrance is on the south face, featuring a round-arched opening with roll-moulded jambs and a label with foliated stops. The doors are deeply recessed wire and wood construction. A slit light pierces the west face at the first stage. The bell stage (third storey) has a sloping stringcourse returned onto each side and tall, paired lancets to each face with roll-moulded jambs and shared, stopped and moulded labels; cusped and roll-moulded oculi face east and west. The vestry has coped side walls and a triple cusped lancet group to the north. Its entrance is to the east: a round-arched, chamfered opening with returned label and deeply-recessed boarded door with simple ironwork, approached by three steps with low chamfered parapets.

The interior follows a single chamber plan of aisleless nave with vestry adjoining the chancel to the north. The nave is accessed from the west via the tower. It features a barrel-vaulted, boarded roof with pierced ribs of conjoined oculi dividing it into twelve compartments (six to each side). The central pavement is of small bricks with slate margins; plain flanking pine pews line the walls. At the west end stands a simple cylindrical font of sandstone with a tooled, circular limestone plinth, moulded base and quatrefoil decoration to the bowl. The pulpit is similarly constructed—square with broad, hollow-chamfered sides on a matching plinth—and features a moulded rail and quatrefoil oculi to the front.

The rood screen is a 19th-century work in Perpendicular style that incorporates a fragment of a medieval rood screen. The lower section, consisting of an eight-bay arcaded dado, is the primary medieval element, featuring round arches with ocular tracery heads and foliated spandrels. The 19th-century upper section comprises four open ogee arches to either side of a broader central entrance in the usual manner, with cusped decoration and ocular tracery above the ogees and a moulded rood beam with foliated bosses.

A large pointed chancel arch with roll-moulded inner arch springs from corbels. The chancel is stepped up from the nave and has a simple polychromed tiled pavement of red, black, green and yellow tiles. Plain pine reading desks and choir stalls furnish the space. The sanctuary and altar are similarly stepped up with more elaborate pavements. Oak altar rails are carried on pilasters with sunk panel decoration and moulded bosses and capitals, with curved brackets. The altar table incorporates part of an early 17th-century predecessor and has been doubled in length; it features a gadrooned frieze and turned legs. The sandstone retable comprises three sections with a slightly-projecting central section containing a rectangular niche with a relief-carved cross; roll-moulded decoration and flanking blind oculi appear on two tiers, with moulded stringcourses; the central section has a moulded cornice with brattishing.

The vestry leads off to the north from the chancel via a broad segmental arch, which has an arcaded panelled screen to its lower half and a door to the left.

The stained and painted glass includes notable examples. The chancel south wall windows display good quality 13th-century-style glass with Apostle figures, three to a light, in memory of Jane, wife of the Reverend Morgan (rector, died 1873), installed around 1874. These windows have shouldered inner arches with roll-moulded decoration. The east window shows scenes from the life of Christ, to the memory of the Jones family of Llaithgwm. The nave north window (east) contains one light showing the Good Shepherd, in memory of S R C Price (died 1923), by A Seward and Co. of Lancaster.

The church contains several monuments and memorials. An early 19th-century hatchment of the Price family of Rhiwlas hangs on the west wall. The chancel floor contains an inset marble tombstone of R J Price (died 1842), to whom the hatchment may relate.

Within the west tower are several funerary memorials to the Price family of Rhiwlas, removed from the earlier church and relocated here. The north wall displays a painted slatestone wall memorial with white marble inscription tablets in the form of a shallow obelisk on a plinth, commemorating William Price of Rhiwlas, Esquire (died 1774) and the Honourable Elizabeth (died 1778). It features polychromed heraldry in white marble above, with a motto scroll and winged cherub; fragments of the finial lie adjacent. To the right is a large Baroque wall monument of white and grey figured marble, erected in 1718 to the Prices of Rhiwlas. The monument comprises two large inscription tablets with central and flanking Composite pilasters, relief-carved and polychromed coronets and trumpets in the frieze, and a moulded cornice above.

Two further memorial tablets are visible, both with simple architectural frames, one having a segmental moulded pediment and cherub heads to the apron. Reused in the wall are inscribed stones: one Romano-British and two from the former Price chapel, bearing in raised letters: KP A RH QC FECIT K 1599 P.